Mediocrity as Benchmark

Feedback for a performer is like a prop for a creeper. The wider and taller the prop the wider and taller will be the creeper’s reach.

At times I wonder why we are celebrating something that is just as expected. This applies to anything in the world now;

• An artist performing quality art • A government delivering a service
• A cop being honest • A politician talking truth

If you look at it, all the above are just part of the duty they have to perform. My feeling is that, centuries long nepotism is the reason for this loss in quality.

When a group of people who by chance get entertained by an art that they were never introduced to before, they appreciate the performance. This makes the performer famous. Once a person is famous, a circle is formed around him/her and all they do is just sing praises of the performance no matter what quality comes out. These things happens only when someone start performing to a set of audience who are clueless to what they are watching.

This is the very reason why the artists in ancient times only perform for a set of people who can really understand what is being performed. In those days, when the audience does not get what they expected from the performance they just leave without wasting time. This slowly makes the artist not so reputed. So, to maintain their reputation, the artists maintain their quality and when they keep improving on their performance, they get appreciated. This shows that it was more art centric than the artist centric in those days.

In contrast, today, it has become more artists centric. Like I said initially, once the artist becomes famous for whatever reason, they go into a cocoon and the team around them always say what the artist likes to hear and if there is any genuine criticism, it is looked at as an attack. Here the quality (if any) saturates very early and even the audience are pretty much happy to be a viewer of the performer than the performance.

This applies to others too. When government after government does not deliver and they have a media which still sings praise of them then when some government delivers it becomes the golden era where as they have just delivered what is their duty as a government.

May be in the passage of time the humans have also changed to some extent. From concentrating on demanding what we rightly deserve we have started concentrating more on mere criticisms.

-- Satish